fuck

You know, I have to admit, I think the new Coldplay album is pretty good.

Then again, I've always been partial to Coldplay. For a guy who is as much of a bullshit indie/elitist/hipster/asshole or whatever as I probably am to stick with them through an album as mind-numbingly boring as X & Y (christ, even the title is boring), and sit through a million irritating iPod commercials with Chris Martin doing his Bono/Jesus thing, and still run out to buy Viva la Viva or Death and All His Friends the first week it was out... well, I think that's some kind of devotion.

See, I know that the days of Parachutes are long over, and I'm never going to see them again in a place as small as the 9:30 Club (and I'm certainly not going to be ever to wait after a show and meet them again), but I think these four dorky British dudes still have some great potential. The first two times I saw them (before they started touring on increasingly mediocre material) were some of the most energetic and enthusiastic performances I've ever seen. I've never seen a band that seemed so genuinely amazed that a room full of people would ever be so into their music. I left those shows feeling almost as good as I did leaving Flaming Lips and Polyphonic Spree shows, and without the impressive spectacle of those two acts. Coldplay were never going to smash their instruments onstage after a show, but even if singing along with a room full of people as one voice to a song as pretty as "Yellow" sounds irredeemably lame, well, don't knock it until you've tried it.

The thing is, Coldplay eventually became a club act stuck playing in basketball arenas, where their contagious enthusiasm is muddled, and their music started playing the part as well, reaching for the stars but somehow always gazing down at the charmingly befuddled navel of Chris Martin, and all of those U2 comparisons seemed depressingly apt. The difference was that before U2 became bigger than Jesus, they were an angry group of punks (and Boy and War will always be great testaments to the glorious righteousness that was), whereas Coldplay have always been more reflective, even insecure.

All of which is to say that X & Y was a tedious mess, and deserved every negative word thrown at it. What makes Viva la Vida so interesting is that it is a de facto apology for its predecessor. Hiring Brian freaking Eno of all people to produce isn't going to make the U2 comparisons go away any time soon, but the new album is so engaging because it's the first time Coldplay have sounded unpredictable since A Rush of Blood to the Head followed the subdued Parachutes with the clamorous pounding of "Politik." There are abrupt mid-song shifts, songs that abruptly segue into the next song, sounds foreign to any previous incarnation of Coldplay, hip-hop beats combined with huge church organs, waves of trademark Eno-scapes. It's an album full of songs that sound like they were written by real human beings, and if that seems like a small compliment, it's not something that could be said of their last album. The "huge arena rock" sound hasn't gone away, but it's been incorporated into something interesting.

In short, it's engaging pop music, and often pretty damn gorgeous too. It's not exactly great, but there isn't a song on it that I find myself skipping, and it's at least a step in the right direction for the band, a sign that they might still have a masterpiece in them.